


Necromancy

by djarum99



Category: Being Human
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-27
Updated: 2011-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:03:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djarum99/pseuds/djarum99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was born of Season 3, episode 5 - a little look behind the scenes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necromancy

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery for season three, and will probably be jossed by the sixth episode. I’m struggling a bit with canon, and this show! So hard to write fic, when each new installment brings mind-blowing plot twists. But, it’s BH, and they’re giving us episodes with fangs and claws and heartbreak - I’m far, far away from complaining.

In the France of 1917, after Herrick had made him, after the Somme, after war sculpted paradise into a hell fit to house his soul, Mitchell finally found his truth.

The Devil, it seems, has a fine sense of irony.

Herrick’s troupe of scavengers had followed the river winding seaward, gunmetal gray and stinking of death. Seth had trailed behind, nattering and prancing, drunk on brandy and German strays - _“just doin’ my part for the cause, boy, though it tastes of moldy cheese an’ bangers - I’m a bacon sarnie man, meself_ ”. At dawn ( _a Sunday, it was a Sunday_ ), they’d strolled through a ruined village, naught but ash and tumbled brick, empty boots and rat-gnawed bones.

Except for the church - part of the sanctuary wall remained standing, clinging to a window of fine stained glass. A place of worship; probably called it something else, the people who had warmed its benches, sought salvation and met their doom. Mitchell didn’t speak much French, had been a feeble Catholic, but the sight of that glass stirred an echo, twisted his gut. Saint Adrian stood in the panels, murky in the day’s windswept gloom, the patron of butchers and old soldiers ( _himself at nine, a wrinkled priest, the catechism, memory did hold tight to some things_ ). He’d picked up a rock, meant to smash the holy taunt, and then the sun had pierced the eastern clouds and jeweled flames had pierced his heart. The panes kindled fire, blue and gold and emerald, honing the light like a knife. It had burned, that filtered light, through his uniform, under his skin, flowing red in icy blood transmuted to hot, sweet wine. One last taste of life, of love and hope and connection, before the sky darkened, the rock flew, the glass shattered.

Loving Annie burned like that.

And the Devil had laughed, and God joined in, that winter’s day in Picardy. Laughed, as a monster found revelation, a spotlight for the bloody abyss. Mitchell had known in that moment what Herrick had stolen. Not his will, or his choice - Herrick had killed the man in the mirror, made him Other, set him forever beyond the pale. Alone. He’d been scrabbling at the gates of humanity ever since, or lying to himself, and maybe he’d never known the difference. A man with no reflection is blind.

Annie, he’d hurt Annie, and Herrick lay watching, tucked up in the eaves, a vicious patient spider. He’d hurt her, wanted to deny her promise, her sun - because he was afraid for her, didn’t want her there to watch when that bullet found its mark. _Because you’re a coward, because Nina was right, because the poison was in your blood and always had been, the vampire simply mirrors the man..._

Herrick was living in their sodding _attic,_ whispering, and the only sane choice was to stake him. Except it wasn’t. He’d stopped Annie from killing Herrick - _“right through the heart, yeah?”_ \- and she’d been glorious, cold and certain in her fury. She’d come a long way back from purgatory, a long way back from Bristol. But he’d stopped her ( _because you’re a coward, Mitchell, a liar, you’ve merely found a dead girl to believe the sorry tale_ ) because Herrick held the key.

The next full moon, a wolf-shaped bullet ( _heaven’s own hound, and a ripe little peach nonetheless_ )...but Mitchell was coming back. For eternity. For Annie. ( _I’ve schooled you well, my favorite son, in the art of self-deception._ )

Mitchell drowns the voice in her that night. He wants her to feel him, feel that slow desperate ache, and she does, she does. Annie spins flesh and blood from the thread of her belief. _“Inside out and backwards, but it’s you, Mitchell. I feel through you.”_ He thrusts deep, her hips mirror his, and vision floods with spectral color, a lake of shattered glass.

~

 _Memory’s muse has failed him, but he can trust the dark to guide him true. Four, then three, then two, then one - the locomotive circles and Herrick dispatches railcars until nothing remains but the engine, cheerful and relentless, chugging on towards... Well. That will come to him in time. He’s the Little Engine That Could._

 _The final trainwreck will be magnificent._

 _Mitchell hangs by a ghostly thread, and Herrick knows just the blade to sever the tie. The boy no longer remembers the difference between his lies and his black hole truth. No need to know the truth himself to use it, sharp and sure. Annie will be more of a challenge, more of a pleasure, though Herrick hears pages flutter in the dim rooms of his past, thinks he may have misread that book before. May have fallen off the last chapter’s cliff. The floor of the attic shifts and shimmers, but he can’t_ see, _not her truth, not yet. Love is the most dangerous weapon of all, but her sword is new and his is ancient - this he knows beyond all doubt._

 _Love. The dogs reek of it, and reveal their soft underbellies. George, whimpering about paternity to the first smiling mask he sees, to kindly blank slate Uncle Billy. There’s something disturbing about that, something twisted and vaguely satisfying, but no matter. He’ll put his finger on it soon, put his fingers round its throat. Nina, on the other metaphorical hand, is easy. Fear, distrust, rage, pain, these are a few of his favorite things and she wears them like a cloak. Little Red Riding Hood (he’s made good use of his attic library), which makes him the Deep Dark Wood, if not the Big Bad Wolf. Irony - that tops the list of his favorites, the word bitter on his tongue._

 _Herrick can hear them, all but Annie, can stroll their dreams with impunity, walk the paths of their waking thoughts. A shove here, a guidepost there, a whisper or two of...truth, that was the beauty of it. Their truth would see them lost forever, and he need never leave the attic. Though he would, of course. After. The world awaits beyond his turret windows, beyond Barry, beyond the sea. But for now, he has the dust and quiet of this sunny room, a child’s room, the perfect lair for a patient spider._

 _The glass is filmed with a canvas of grime, and Herrick scrawls an empty sum. Four, then three, then two, then one, and the end result is null. An empty space, to be filled with... Well. That will come to him, in time._


End file.
